from the facts?-who-needs-facts? dept

We recently wrote about how the availability of music-streaming services seems to be have a big impact on reducing the scale of illegal downloads in various Scandinavian countries. Thomas Steen pointed out to us that the country with the highest proportion accessing music authorized streaming services is his native Norway, which is particularly noteworthy because Norway also has the least aggressive laws against illegal downloads in the region (he kindly put together a document comparing cases in Denmark, Sweden and Norway involving piracy to highlight this.) That not only undermines the case for tough anti-piracy laws, but also Norway's own plans to bring the laws in, which are still grinding their way through the system.

Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?

You're maybe right or *not* (Minecraft is a good example). But, please, give an example where a law has lead to innovation and creation. Legislation is a destructive process. Laws always reduce your freedom, sometime it is necessary like laws against murder, rape, ... It think there is enough laws to protect intellectual property. Everybody know that it is illegal to share works which are not yours. Now it is time to stop spending millions on laws and protection and start building real alternatives.

Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?

Do you have any proof of what you say? "No one anywhere at anytime would ever create anything" seems a bit exaggerated, since the world is full of stuff which is freely copied, if not even copyleft. Surely, you are familiar with the Creative Commons and Free/open source software (it runs the Internet, as you surely know, and, yes, by the way it's free, and big business like IBM, Oracle and Google heavily invest on it).
Also can I point out that:
a) "anti-piracy" does not mean "no copyright" – but we can discuss even if copyright is necessary;
b) not because one business model exists that was born in a pre-Internet era, this is now the only viable business model;
c) same thing was said when personal VCR became available: "how would you think the movie industry would survive if people can freely copy movies and see them on the telly"; experience tells us differently.

i wonder where the pressure is coming from to get Norway to increase it's anti-piracy laws, especially when they have the proof in front of them that nothing needs changing? it never ceases to amaze me that when something is working, how someone has to come along to try to fix it by fucking it up completely!

>>especially when they have the proof in front of them that nothing needs changing?

That right there!

Above all else, the industry must do something about the Norway situation because it disproves what the IP lobby is saying. SOPA woke up some parts of the media and the tech community and they no longer automatically swallow the industry propaganda unchallenged. Before the SOPA disaster it didn't really matter if there was counter evidence because no one was paying attention to anything other than industry press releases. Now that some people in the media are waking up there is a great danger that the counter evidence will catch attention of some mainstream reporter looking for an easy story.

Apples to Oranges

As much as I want to agree with the general argument here (and I agree in theory still), this doesn't prove your point. Comparing a tiny, homogenous country like Norway to the US or even the rest of Europe stretches the apples to oranges metaphor. Norway is almost all white middle class, has restrictive immigration laws, and is a relatively closed monoculture (with an exploding Islamic minority, but this development is too recent to impact this argument).

Obviously, you cannot compare such a tightly closed and controlled society with the more open and free wheeling US. Hell, we have more illegal immigrants from our third world neighbors to the south than the entire Norwegian population. LA County is 3 times bigger than Norway- and 10 times more diverse in social, economic, and ethnic terms. The comparison is pointless.

Still, I agree with the basic idea. We just need to base it on more appropriate data.

Re: Apples to Oranges

Norwegians are not fools, much less so than the yanks in any case. Common sense and decency is inherent in Scandanavian Nations, and as such, common VOLK will not stand for corporate cronies trying to "own" the net(facebook`s shugerman and jewgle`s brin, for example)and interfering with their internet trends. This is a concerted effort globally to distract newsreaders. netizens will force repeal of these infirngements on freedoms of info.

disinPHORMation

2011 etymology tophats created top 2 buzzwords for the year: "occupy" and "piracy", both entirely deflective from their most prevalent and critical occurances, Palestine, and the Palestinian Territorial Coastline.

the OCCUPATION of Palestine is a crime against humanity and common decency---------------------the occupy protest movements did nothing to impede banker(corporate) moves on the Continent of Europe.

the PIRACY in international waters near the Palestinian Coast and the murders commited in the course of the acts of PIRACY by the Israellys was also a crime against humanity.-----------------------------the furore over file sharing and internet freedoms and the occupy protest movements have virtually erased google search results for the two terms which in 2010 would have certainly brought the user to the Palestinian Human Rights/Apartheid debate.

Re: Re: Re:

I don't know if the econmic part has too much to do with compared to the US. The price for a subscription is about buying one new CD in the USA each month. Maybe less. And there is a practical part of it. We see people who have never downloaded music earlier use Spotify and Wimp because it gives a hugh music library and is _easy to use_.

My mother havn't bought a CD in maybe 10-12 years. Now she is a Spotify premium-subsciber. And there are new generations coming. My 9 year old have her own Spotify Unlimited-subscription. She have never downloaded music, and I will guess she will find solutions like Spotify easier.

For many, transfering music to their phone ain't easy. With Spotify or Wimp, it's easy to have music on their phone.